Fresno Bucket List continued

This post continues the listing of things to experience in Fresno, let’s not say before you die (that’s so, negative), but “at least once”. The ground rules are it still must exist and be available (no riding a street car to the river), within an hour’s drive of Fresno (three hours to Santa Cruz Boardwalk is not a Fresno activity), and a third generation should be discovering it (a movie at Edward’s doesn’t count).

A recap of what I suggested yesterday (for those unfamiliar with the scroll down feature of modern computers).

Eat a chicken pot pie at the Chicken Pot Pie Shop

See a movie at the Tower Theater

Take a walk on the Fulton Mall

Play at Blackbeard’s

Following on the play theme of Blackbeard’s, the only discussion about putting Roeding Park on this list is should there be individual credit for the zoo, Playland, and Storyland. I think each is a great experience and worthy as a unique listing themselves. But I would add that for Roeding Park to count, you have to feed the ducks, play on a jungle gym, or have a picnic. Driving through the park to get to one of the above doesn’t count for out purposes here. Get out of the car.

One item that DOES count when just “driving through” is Christmas Tree Lane. This is a no-brainer for a Fresno list of things to do. For anyone who has lived a year or more in Fresno, there is no need to recount the history of Christmas Tree Lane. Walking it (on or off designated days), doing Huntington Boulevard’s version, or seeing the luminaria of the Bullard area county island counts as extra points towards being a Fresnan.

I’ve bagged on Fresno not being close enough to the coast to count, but there is a water’s edge that counts and that is Millerton Lake. This fits all our criteria to a tee, half hour outside of Fresno, past and current generations are using. Though, if drought conditions worsen, it might not be available, but then we’ll have worse problems than were to play. Camping, fishing, water skiing, most outdoor activities take place here and doing any at Millerton count towards experiencing it.

A very unique Fresno experience is the Forestiere Underground Gardens. For those unfamiliar with the story Baldassare Forestiere came to Fresno and built an incredible network of underground passages, rooms, courtyards with skylights (by hand!) to help escape the Fresno heat. While it may seem crazy to do so, one only has to spend one Fresno summer day with no AC to realize he was on to something.

This is just a sampling of what the list could contain. Perhaps we need to break it into categories like food, events, day to day experiences. I would also have some little things like buying fruit from a street-side stall. Not unique to Fresno, but often grown within eyesight. Buying something from the Central Fish Market. Sure, other places have bigger, more impressive Chinatowns and fish markets, but that one is ours and a Fresnan should say they have been there.

Those are just a few of my items for a Fresno Bucket List. What are yours? Leave a comment and perhaps we’ll start an official list or website. That sounds like a good project. I’ll add it to my list.